In the heat of battle, is hit point loss a wound?

[Hussar]

Added a bit later.

I'd point out that you can certainly up the healing rates in 3e without making huge problems. In fact, I found it improved my game considerably when we added in healing wands. Pacing increased considerably for us. So much so, that for any 3e campaign I would have run afterwards, I would have made full healing standard and likely made full healing after every encounter standard.

And, really, that wouldn't break the game in any meaningful way. It is a fairly easy tweak that improves the game for me.

Note, the entire above is solely for me, not for anyone else. My point is, it's not exactly difficult to "adjust the slider" to get what you want. For me, tracking HP and healing is not something I enjoy. I don't. I like the resource management mini-game, but, not this particular subset of it. So, I dump it. And, in either 3e or 4e, it works for me. I can't speak to earlier editions because I never tried it there.

So, yeah, sliders and dials are what is needed here. Of course, now critics can truly point to something and say, "That's so videogamey". After all, what's more video gamey than a slider to adjust difficulty?

 

[Lanefan]

Added a bit later.

I'd point out that you can certainly up the healing rates in 3e without making huge problems. In fact, I found it improved my game considerably when we added in healing wands. Pacing increased considerably for us. So much so, that for any 3e campaign I would have run afterwards, I would have made full healing standard and likely made full healing after every encounter standard.

And, really, that wouldn't break the game in any meaningful way.

Depends how one wants to play, I suppose: for me, it would not just break the game but shatter it - both as player and DM.

Question: if using that system would you also refresh casters' spell slots/points/abilities after each encounter?

Note, the entire above is solely for me, not for anyone else. My point is, it's not exactly difficult to "adjust the slider" to get what you want. For me, tracking HP and healing is not something I enjoy. I don't. I like the resource management mini-game, but, not this particular subset of it. So, I dump it. And, in either 3e or 4e, it works for me. I can't speak to earlier editions because I never tried it there.

I can immediately think of one type of game situation where this would not work well: where one group is trying to slowly wear down the other. An example:

A low-ish level party stumbles upon a few Giants; and has a good hiding place nearby to raid from. They know they don't have a chance in a slugfest with these Giants, so they nibble and retreat, nibble and retreat, day after day and try to each day inflict a bit more damage than the Giants can recover - until the Giants either leave the area (a victory) or are weak enough that the party *can* think about finishing them off in a straight-up fight.

Doesn't work if the Giants can fully recover every night. And if the Giants cannot fully recover every night but the party can there's a severe consistency problem within the game world.

Lanefan

 

[Campbell]

I can immediately think of one type of game situation where this would not work well: where one group is trying to slowly wear down the other. An example:

A low-ish level party stumbles upon a few Giants; and has a good hiding place nearby to raid from. They know they don't have a chance in a slugfest with these Giants, so they nibble and retreat, nibble and retreat, day after day and try to each day inflict a bit more damage than the Giants can recover - until the Giants either leave the area (a victory) or are weak enough that the party *can* think about finishing them off in a straight-up fight.

Doesn't work if the Giants can fully recover every night. And if the Giants cannot fully recover every night but the party can there's a severe consistency problem within the game world.

Lanefan

I have a slightly different perspective on this. It's the equivalent of poking the mixed metaphor that hp represent in the chest and saying "I know what you're up to." Exchange the giants in your example for higher level adventurers and you can see how silly it is unless a higher level fighter can actually survive get stabbed in the chest, having his throat slit, and getting burned alive and still kick your ass. That's not really something that makes me too comfortable. I'm a firm believer that hit points only work in play if you don't look too closely at them.

 

[Mercutio01]

I'm a firm believer that hit points only work in play if you don't look too closely at them.

I think that's a good piece of info there. And I think I agree, so I think a large portion of my objection 4E's style of hit point recovery is tied directly to the fact that I'm forced to look more closely at them than I ever did in 2E or 3E. Healing surges, the increased number of HP and the exponential increase in recovery forced them further into the light than they ever were for me previous to 4E.

I will say that because I was forced to look at HP closer in 2008, that I think I've become a better user of HP and healing than I was prior to that, mostly by seeing an approach I totally didn't like and thinking about why and how to then use that better in my own games in other editions.

 

[Hussar]

Depends how one wants to play, I suppose: for me, it would not just break the game but shatter it - both as player and DM.

Question: if using that system would you also refresh casters' spell slots/points/abilities after each encounter?

Nope. Just hit points. Mostly because 3e combat is so bloody lethal. A par CR creature can potentially kill most PC's in a single round of attacks. To me, that means that going into any combat at less than (close enough to) full hit points is just radically increasing the lethality. When I ran 3e straight up, I was ganking a PC every three sessions. About once every 6-8 encounters. That's WAYYYY too lethal for me.

So, to get around that, I'd just refresh HP after each encounter. Makes a fairly easy fix. And, like I say, tracking HP isn't something I enjoy. It forces too many concessions on pacing. I want the party to have a choice between going right back at the lair and hit them while they're still reeling, or wait a few days and try to be sneaky. I don't want the mechanics to say, "Sorry, you really, really shouldn't go back right away because you will almost certainly die" and push the players towards using meta-game and quite honestly for me, boring reasons for decision making.

I can immediately think of one type of game situation where this would not work well: where one group is trying to slowly wear down the other. An example:

A low-ish level party stumbles upon a few Giants; and has a good hiding place nearby to raid from. They know they don't have a chance in a slugfest with these Giants, so they nibble and retreat, nibble and retreat, day after day and try to each day inflict a bit more damage than the Giants can recover - until the Giants either leave the area (a victory) or are weak enough that the party *can* think about finishing them off in a straight-up fight.

Doesn't work if the Giants can fully recover every night. And if the Giants cannot fully recover every night but the party can there's a severe consistency problem within the game world.

Lanefan

Yeah, but, two things. One, I have zero problems with PC's having different recovery rates. Doesn't phase me in the slightest. It works for virtually all protagonists in fiction, so, not going to bother me here. But, probably more importantly, this is a REALLY small corner case. You're setting up a situation which is just very, very rare, IME.

I mean, heck, the odds of the PC's being able to do enough damage to the giants without the giants doing MORE damage to them makes this scenario REALLY out in left field. After all, if the party can reliably out damage the giants, why are they falling back in the first place? If they cannot out damage the giants, then this plan isn't going to work. Not unless the PC's are tapping in magical healing. In which case, the PC's get a healing rate similar to what I want anyway.

Cleric healing or "story chutzpah" I don't really care to be honest. The end result is all I care about.

 

[pemerton]

It's the equivalent of poking the mixed metaphor that hp represent in the chest and saying "I know what you're up to." Exchange the giants in your example for higher level adventurers and you can see how silly it is unless a higher level fighter can actually survive get stabbed in the chest, having his throat slit, and getting burned alive and still kick your ass. That's not really something that makes me too comfortable. I'm a firm believer that hit points only work in play if you don't look too closely at them.

Nice post.

As I see it, "wearing down" the enemy adventuers by gradually depleting their hit points is, in effect, wearing them down by depleting their metagame resource faster than they can replenish it within the game rules.

I don't see that there is any "believability" or "realism" metric by which this can be judged - whether or not you want the rate of resource replenishment to permit this sort of play depends, I guess, on what sort of pacing you want your game to have, and how you want ingame pacing to relate to at-the-game table.

It's pretty easy to envision a variant of 4e that expressly turns "encounter" and "daily" resources into "per scene" and "per session" resources instead, and then would permit the stalking of the adventurer party to be resolved as a single scene. Scene-based recovery of hit points wouldn't interfere with that at all.

Conversely, if I wanted to run the stalking as an adventure - a sequence of scenes - then it would be nicer to have some sort of in-fiction story to tell about what exactly the "wearing down" consists of. This is the sort of thing that I would look to Runequest or Rolemaster to run, rather than D&D.

 

[Lanefan]

Nope. Just hit points. Mostly because 3e combat is so bloody lethal. A par CR creature can potentially kill most PC's in a single round of attacks. To me, that means that going into any combat at less than (close enough to) full hit points is just radically increasing the lethality. When I ran 3e straight up, I was ganking a PC every three sessions. About once every 6-8 encounters. That's WAYYYY too lethal for me.

This is, of course, about more than just 3e; though 3e certainly was its own animal when it came to combats and how they played out, and the game design certainly didn't encourage things like combat avoidance, negotiation, etc.

So, to get around that, I'd just refresh HP after each encounter. Makes a fairly easy fix. And, like I say, tracking HP isn't something I enjoy. It forces too many concessions on pacing. I want the party to have a choice between going right back at the lair and hit them while they're still reeling, or wait a few days and try to be sneaky. I don't want the mechanics to say, "Sorry, you really, really shouldn't go back right away because you will almost certainly die" and push the players towards using meta-game and quite honestly for me, boring reasons for decision making.

What's meta-game about realizing you're thrashed and need to rest for a while?

Yeah, but, two things. One, I have zero problems with PC's having different recovery rates. Doesn't phase me in the slightest. It works for virtually all protagonists in fiction, so, not going to bother me here.

Where to me, this is a complete non-starter. If the PCs can recover near-instantly then so can their foes...and, as someone else mentioned, what happens if the foes are themselves adventurers?

But, probably more importantly, this is a REALLY small corner case. You're setting up a situation which is just very, very rare, IME.

Rare, yes; mostly because some players don't have the paticnce to pull it off. But I've seen it, and done it.

I mean, heck, the odds of the PC's being able to do enough damage to the giants without the giants doing MORE damage to them makes this scenario REALLY out in left field.

Actually, not as far out as you might think...and this actual example comes from a 3e game. A single 8th-ish level wizard casts fly, improved invis., and flies over strafing the giant village with a few fireballs every day hoping that a) the giants don't have magic healing and b) she can hurt them more each day than they can recover each night. Very little chance of damage to the wizard (they can't see her, even if they can their throwing range is severely cut when the target is straight up, and giants don't fly so they're not about to come up and try to bash her), lots of chance for damage to the giants; and she got rid of quite a few of their little orc and goblin helpers too.

And it worked! It took a while, but she finally whittled them down to the point we could all charge in and finish them off.

After all, if the party can reliably out damage the giants, why are they falling back in the first place?

Because the whole point of this tactic is to not give the giants any chance to do damage in return; so we don't need to worry about our own healing/rest/whatever.

Collectively, the giants might have had 2000 or more h.p. (the village had about 30 of them, with various lesser helpers) - if we can net-of-recovery out-damage them an average of 75-0 each day we will win; provided we are patient. The important part is the 0 - defense wins championships!

But any situation where the giants get full recovery each night (or worse, after each battle) renders this useless, and removing that tactical option makes the game just that much less interesting.

Lanefan

 

[Hussar]

Yay for wizards. Bleah. So, not to my taste anymore.

As far as PC's go, again, I have zero problems with PC's being different from everyone else. It's already largely baked into the game anyway - Action Points being a big example, but, even in earlier editions, PC classes were extremely rare and the PC's were meant to be pretty unique.

But, yeah, it's a taste thing. I have no problems treating PC's as different. The game has presumed such since day 1. After all, funnily enough, PC adventures are almost always scaled to the rough level of the PC. The PC's are the center of the world, or at least the campaign. At least IMNSHO.

All you have to do is look at examples where the PC's are not the center of the world and you get some of the most loathed products in D&D - Time of Troubles anyone?

 

[Mercutio01]

I have no problems treating PC's as different. The game has presumed such since day 1.

I think you and I have very different ideas on this. OD&D, BD&D, and AD&D had PCs start out as pretty much regular people.

After all, funnily enough, PC adventures are almost always scaled to the rough level of the PC. The PC's are the center of the world, or at least the campaign. At least IMNSHO.

And that's exactly what I mean when I say I have a different playstyle than you. In my games, while the PCs are the center of the gaming session, and their actions have an impact on the world, they are far from the center of the world.

All you have to do is look at examples where the PC's are not the center of the world and you get some of the most loathed products in D&D - Time of Troubles anyone?

There are a few entirely different reasons for hating the Time of Troubles than because it wasn't centered around the PCs, but that's a whole other topic.

 

[Hussar]

I think you and I have very different ideas on this. OD&D, BD&D, and AD&D had PCs start out as pretty much regular people.

And that's exactly what I mean when I say I have a different playstyle than you. In my games, while the PCs are the center of the gaming session, and their actions have an impact on the world, they are far from the center of the world.

There are a few entirely different reasons for hating the Time of Troubles than because it wasn't centered around the PCs, but that's a whole other topic.

I'd say the whole "railroaded and then turned into a spectator" thing is pretty much the heart of the problems with Time of Troubles. Which is exactly what happens if the PC's are not the center of the universe. Or, if not the center, at least in the ballpark.

As far as earlier D&D goes, sure, 1st level PC's were only a few steps up from regular people (note, regular people had d4 hp, and no stats as opposed to PC's which had considerably more), but, within a level or two, PC's were considerably more than just a regular guy.

But, that's not really my point. The point of play is the campaign, not the world. The world is just where the campaign happens. The campaign should be the most important thing at the table. And the campaign should place the PC's squarely at the center of the actions, otherwise, why bother playing? Many play problems can be traced to DM's forgetting that the PC's should be the center of what's going on. That's the whole point of being protagonists.

Reread the introduction to pretty much any edition of D&D and you get the same message: The players are the whole point of playing. Which, to me, means that I have no problem adapting the campaign to the players and what they want out of the campaign.